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The Sea-Serpent

On the dark bottom of the great salt lake Imprisoned lay the giant snake, With naught his sullen sleep to break.

Poets of the North, "Oelenschlæger." Translated by Longfellow.

THAT frank writer, Montaigne, says* :- "Yet on the other side it is a sottish presumption to disdaine and condemne that for false, which unto us seemeth to beare no show of likelihood or truth: which is an ordinarie fault in those who perswade themselves to be of more sufficiencie than the vulgar sort. "But reason hath taught me, that so resolutely to condemne a thing for false, and impossible, is to assume unto himself the advantage, to have the bounds and limits of God's will, and of the power of our common mother Nature tied to his sleeve: and that there is no greater folly in the world, than to reduce them to the measure of our capacitie, and bounds of our sufficiencie. "If we term those things monsters or miracles to which our reason cannot attain, how many such doe daily present * Montaigne, Essays, chap. xxvi, themselves unto our sight? let us consider through what cloudes, and how blinde-folde we are led to the knowledge of most things, that passe our hands: verily we shall finde, it is rather custome, than Science that removeth the strangenesse of them from us: and that those things, were they newly presented unto us, wee should doubtless deeme them, as much, or more unlikely, and incredible, than any other."

Montaigne's remarks seem to me to apply as aptly to the much-vexed question of the existence or non-existence of the sea-serpent as though they had been specially written in reference to it.

The sea-serpent, at once the belief and the denied of scientific men; the accepted and ignored, according to their estimation of the evidence, of reasoners, not scientific perhaps, but intelligent and educated; the valued basis for items to the journalist, and the quintain for every selfsufficient gobemouche to tilt against; appearing mysteriously at long intervals and in distant places; the sea-serpent has as yet avoided capture and the honourable distinction of being catalogued and labelled in our museums.

Yet I do believe this weird creature to be a real solid fact, and not a fanciful hallucination. This assertion, however, has to be sustained under many difficulties. The dread of ridicule closes the mouths of many men who could speak upon the subject, while their dependent position forces them to submit to the half-bantering, half-warning expostulations of their employers. When, for example, an unimaginative shipowner breaks jests over his unfortunate shipmaster's head, and significantly hints his hope (as I know to have been the case) that on his next voyage he will see no more sea-serpents, or, in other words, that the great monster belongs to the same genus as the snakes seen in the boots of a western dram-drinker, we may be sure that an important barrier is put to any further communication on the subject from that source, at least; * or when, again, some knot of idle youngsters enliven the monotony of a long voyage by preparing a deliberate hoax for publication on their arrival, a certain amount of discredit necessarily attaches to the monster on the ultimate exposure of the jest. 6 * "I fully believe in this great marine monster. I have as much evidence as to its existence as of anything not seen. Some years ago, Captain Austin Cooper and the officers and crew of the Carlisle Castle, on a vogage to Melbourne, saw the 'varmint.' A description and sketch of it were published in the Argus. This, when it arrived in London, it being the 'silly season' in journalism, was seized and torn to pieces by one of the young lions of the Daily Telegraph, in a leading article, in which much fun was poked at the gallant sailor. I don't see any more sea-serpents,' said my Irish friend to me. 'It is too much to be told that one of Green's commanders can't tell the difference between a piece of sea-weed and a live body in the water. If twenty serpents come on the starboard, all hands shall be ordered to look to port. No London penny-a-liner shall say again that Austin Cooper is a liar and a fool.' After this we softened down over some Coleraine whiskey. Again, some three years ago, the monster was plainly seen off the great reef of New Caledonia by Commandant Villeneuve, and the officers of the French man-of-war, the Seudre. Chassepots were procured to shoot it, but before it came within easy range it disappeared. During my late visit to Fiji, Major James Harding, who was an officer in Cakoban's army when that chief, 'by the grace of God' was king of Fiji, described exactly the same creature as passing within a few yards of his canoe on a clear moonlight night in the Bay of Suva. It swam towards a small island outside the reef, which is known amongst Fijians as the 'Cave of the Big Snake.' Major Harding is a cool, brave soldier, who saw much hot work with Cakoban's men against the hill tribes of Vonua Levu. He was once riddled by bullets, and left for dead. Accustomed for years to travel about the reefs in canoes, every phase of the aspect of the waters was known to him, and he was not likely to be frightened with false fire. The extraordinary thing is, that the English sailor, the French commander, and the Fijian soldier, all gave the same account of this monster. It is something with a head slightly raised out of the water, and with a sort of mane streaming behind it, whilst the back of a long body is seen underneath the water. So, from these instances, in which I know the witnesses, I fully believe in the sea-serpent. What is there very wonderful in it, after all? The whale is the largest living thing. Why shouldn't the waters produce snakes of gigantic size." THE VAGABOND, in Supplement to the Australasian, September 10, 1881. Men also occasionally deceive themselves, and while honestly believing that they have seen his oceanic majesty, produce a story which, on analysis, crumbles into atoms and crowns him with disgrace as an impostor.

The hard logic of science, in the hand of one of our master minds, has also been arrayed against him, but fortunately weighs rather against special avatars than against his existence absolutely.

Finally, the narratives of different observers disagree so much in detail that we have a difficulty in reconciling them, except upon the supposition that they relate to several distinct creatures, a supposition which I shall hope to show is not improbable, as well as that the term sea-serpent is an unwarranted specific differentiation of that of sea-monster, the various creatures collectively so designated being neither serpents nor, indeed, always mutually related. In commencing my record, I must bear in mind Mrs. Glasse's proverbially excellent advice, and admit that it is simply a history of the various appearances of a creature or creatures too fugitive to admit of specific examination, and that until, by some remarkable stroke of fortune, specimens are secured, their zoological status must remain an unsolved, although closely guessed at, problem.

I have elsewhere stated my conviction that the serpent Midgard is only a corruption of accounts of the sea-serpent handed down from times when a supernatural existence was attributed to it; and we have in the Sagas probably the earliest references to it, unless, perhaps, the serpents mentioned by Aristotle, which attacked and overset the galleys off the Libyan coast, may have been of this species.